Lies. Damn Lies and Politics

Well, I stayed away from here during the primary season because I didn’t want anyone accusing me of using my blog for the candidates I worked for. Not sure why it makes that much of a difference but there you are.

Some of my candidates won–John McDonald for the Assembly and Neil Breslin for the Senate. Some of them lost–Tim Nichols, who was running for the Assembly seat where I live, and most heartachingly, Roy McDonald.

I could armchair quarterback all the races from today until the end of time but it wouldn’t make much of a difference. Roy lost and now the Senate race is between Kathy Marchione, an anti-LGBT and anti-choice Republican and Robin Andrews, an out lesbian who is the Town Supervisor in, of all places, Claverack.

Kathy used the underhanded and misleading politics of the National Organizaton for Marriage and the Tea Party to win in the Republican primary. It was really too close to call a major victory but there were enough votes between the two to claim victory. Like her party’s leader, Mitt Romney, Marchione mislead the public. First she was running against Roy because of his marriage equality vote. Then she wasn’t–it had to do with a vote he made on taxing the rich.

Kathy Marchione is our local Etch-a-Sketch politician–shaking the board and coming up with the answer the particular audience she’s talking to wants to hear.

But Marchione is minor, minor league compared to Romney who can’t figure out what he believes in.

When he ran against Ted Kennedy in 1994 for US Senate he told the LGBT community he’d be a better friend to us than Teddy. Now, Romney is the anti-LGBT standard bearer for the GOP. He skirted family issues in last night’s debate when he said children needed a mom and a dad and then there would be less gun violence.

I’m not sure what dots he was trying to connect there but certainly he was clear–mom and dad, not mom and mom or dad and dad. I wonder if there have been any recent shootings at say, movie theaters or shopping malls, where the person was raised by same-sex parents. Not casting aspertions but just saying.

But let’s get back to Mitt. He is running on the GOP platform that is quite simply a war against women. Limit access to contraception. Let employers decide if women should have coverage that includes contraception. No abortion even in cases of rape, incest or threat to the life of the mother.

With the nomination secured, Mitt is running from that platform pandering to the undecideds in a way that makes even die-hard politicos like me wonder why we’re in this business.

Does he want to defund Planned Parenthood or not? Does he want to repeal Roe v. Wade or not? Does he want us to return to pre-1964 Griswold v. CT–the case that made access to contraception a right, not a privilege? Does Mitt really believe in anything other than winning?

I’m not naive enough to think that politicians–all of them–don’t stretch the truth to fit their message–it’s called SPIN. But outright lying–well that’s in the realm of Tricky Dick.

In last night’s debate, Mitt was caught in his foreign policy lie–saying the President didn’t call the attacks on our Libyan consulate an “act of terror” the day after it happened. Mitt left the rostrum with egg on his face because even the moderator, Candy Crowley, knew he was wrong and called him out on it.

His others lies–creating 12 million jobs in four years, cutting $5 trillion in taxes, saving the middle class by maintaining the capital gains exemption–they’re all a sales job to people he knows won’t think about what he says and will take it all at face value.

And why do these folks take what Romney says at face value, leaving critical thinking outside their realm of possibility? It’s simple–they don’t want an African-American man sitting in the White House shaping policy. All you Tea Partiers can jump up and down all you want and point to Herman Cain and Allen West to show that race doesn’t matter to you.

Give it a rest. Race is the singular unspoken issue in this race. Mitch McConnell and John Boehner don’t want that uppity guy in the Oval Office to succeed because it takes away from their sense of superiority and privilege.

Last night’s debate showed who uses the facts and who treads with half-truths and lies. Sure, it’s getting close–it always does in the last few weeks of the campaign. But it’s when it’s close like this that Obama shows how good a fighter he is. He likes being an underdog–that’s how he got the Stimulus Package and Health Care Reform done.